Perhaps the most interesting bit of under-reported news that may have failed to cross your screen relates to the unmasking of President Trump’s supporters and family members in intelligence reports. Samantha Power, the former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, was implicated in “‘unmasking’ at such a rapid pace in the final months of the Obama administration that she averaged more than one request for every working day in 2016 – and even sought information in the days leading up to President Trump’s inauguration.

“Her testimony is they may be under my name, but I did not make those requests,” Gowdy said of former Ambassador Samantha Power during an interview with Fox News’ Bret Baier on “Special Report with Bret Baier.”

Power is among the Obama administration figures who made requests to identify Americans whose names surfaced in foreign intelligence reporting, known as unmasking.

…”I think if she were on your show, she would say those requests to unmask may have been attributed to her, but they greatly exceed by an exponential factor the requests she actually made,” Gowdy said. “So, that’s her testimony, and she was pretty emphatic in it.”

The South Carolina Republican added, “So, we’ve got to get to the bottom of that. If there is someone else making requests on behalf of a principal in the intelligence community, we need to know that because we’re getting ready to reauthorize a program that’s really important to the country, but also has a masking component to it.”

It would be fascinating to learn who is responsible for these unmasking requests. Here’s to hoping someone in Congress or the administration is interested enough to follow the trail to its end. One can deduce, I think, that it is a person who would not have been authorized to unmask these records.

I think American people need to know exactly who was doing what in the Obama Administration. There used to be a time the press was willing to ask, “who knows what” and “when did they know it.” Perhaps if the press reported real news, it wouldn’t be so easy to mock it as #FakeNews.

…which, if true, means she allowed her security credentials to be used for things which she did not personally approve, which is ANOTHER violation of national security.

She’s in a really deep hole with no way out. If she abused her clearance to unmask Republican political opponents, she’s toast. If others did it on her behalf, she’s toast. If others did it using her credentials without her knowledge, she’s toast for not immediately reporting it.

Just ask anybody in the military who leaves their CAC card unattended in their computer in a SCIF while they leave to use the bathroom.

“…‘unmasking’ at such a rapid pace in the final months of the Obama administration that she averaged more than one request for every working day in 2016…”

Yet, no one in the FISA court was puzzled as to why Obama’s UN Ambassador made such volumonous unmasking requests; nor asked for clarifications from the intelligence community about Mrs. Powers’ activity; nor questioned Mrs. Powers directly as to her motives in this year long pursuit in exposing classified information?

Some anon simply committed a felony in her name for over a year??

I call horse crap on this entire former administration of lying liars who habitually lie all the time.

Impotent Congressional hearings all around so the newspapers and blogs have something to sell, and the congress critters can justifu their phoney baloney jobs, then it all goes down the memory hole, and no one will be held to account.

The size of the criminal conspiracy required to falsify 200+ unmasking records by forging Power’s name upon them is quite impressive. A whole bunch of people had to have done a lot of very corrupt things over a prolonged period of time for her story to be true.

Virtually all the unmasking is done by the NSA, as they are the agency intercepting the calls. And, they do not unmask US citizen’s names without a written, signed request. If requested or subpoenaed, the NSA will make all of that documentation available to the House Oversight Committee. I doubt that Trey Gowdy will request that, however. Because the Committee does not really want to know who is responsible.

By accepting Powers’ word that she did not request all of these unmasking requests and that they were done using her name without her knowledge, we now have a very serious breach of our national security laws. This is HUGE. There should be several criminal investigations under weigh at this very moment. Instead, all we will hear is crickets. Move along, nothing to see here.

Power knew or had reason to know if someone was illegally using her identity for such purposes, because there is a paper trail for these requests.

Further, I believe there is an ethics lawyer for NSA who personally must vet all of these requests, so who and where was that person?

This whole thing reeks of illegal surveillance of private citizens and 4th Amendment violations galore, and gives further credence to conspiracy theories about a massive surveillance effort including GCHQ and US intel to spy on Trump’s campaign.

This paper trail for Power’s requests should be a no-brainer line of inquiry.

Obviously, all the people in Washington, including Trey Gowdy, have no idea how INFOSEC works, or they think the rest of us are all ignoreant and can’t see through lies.

The unmasking wasn’t done by writing a memo and saying “Hey, George, unmask this person.” The requests were done by computer. On a computer that was logged in to a secure government intranet system. Accessed with with a PIV or CAC card, whatever you want to call it, or a login name with password that changes every 90 days. (The unmasking were done over the course of a year- minimum 3 password changes…) Each request has a date/time stamp that also identifies the sender, the computer it was sent from, and probably the office the computer was in when the request was sent.

And, Samantha Powers was high enough in the food chain that her office has a secretary sitting outside it. Who records all visitors into the office, and the records are maintained. (Except for Hillary, who burned them daily in violation of federal law…)

If you want to know who sent the unmasking requests, easy peazy. get some computer security IT people together at 0800 equipped with necessary clearances, doughnuts and coffee, and tell them you want to have the answers by the end of the workday. They’l probably be done by noon.

But then there’s the first part of that: If you want to know…” It’s almost becoming obvious nobody does want to know.